No Time Like the Present
by Sojamanic
Summary: On the night after a close encounter, Yang receives a wake-up call from her sister. [READER BEWARE RWBY VOLUME 6 CHAPTER 6 SPOILERS, one-shot, hint o' Bumbleby]


A red cast had come over the snowy field in which the group had decided to make camp in for the night. The sky remained clear and cold, but the wind was calm and there was no risk of a storm blowing in that night. With a vigilant watch, they would be safe until they could resume their journey by morning. For a change in recent attitudes, Yang protested the idea of stopping for the night silently, and she relented maybe too easily at the suggestion that they absolutely needed to rest after what had happened at the Brunswick Estate. Feeling weariness and the existential terror from the attack they had, through a combination of luck and persistence, managed to escape without injury, she knew they needed it badly.

For the present, Yang did her best to forget about the morning's events by losing herself in work.

It was a classic Yang maneuver; living was easier to do when you just do it rather than thinking about what you should be doing. It was her one greatest coping mechanism and it gave her an air of responsibility at a young age when all she wanted to do was forget about the two and a half parents she had lost. Her perpetual forward momentum informed everything from her social strategies to her fighting style, and it made her look aggressive, making her easygoing demeanor the only thing that prevented her from being labeled as ambitious. Her high marks at Signal were a point of pride, as was every schoolyard brawl she got involved in because someone bullied Ruby or something, but those times were so far away in her memory now that they may as well have been in another lifetime.

Hard to believe that was just three years ago.

Between the effort of tediously gathering up a bundle of small sticks and breaking apart a fallen tree for larger pieces of fuel to last them the night, Yang had not noticed the timid footsteps of her approaching baby sister.

"Yang?" Ruby Rose's withering voice strained in the cold and exhaustion seemed to become her. Her hood was drawn up, as it often was when she wanted to shut out the world.

"Hey Ruby," she said quietly, regarding Ruby with a cordial but half-hearted smile before turning back to the fallen fir and giving it another blow with her mechanical right hand. Ruby looked at the pile of wood that slowly grew to nearly her height, and her hooded face shed a look of concern. That was way more firewood that they would ever need in one night.

"I think we're good on fires for tonight," she said anxiously, thinking back to Weiss' crowning act of arson. Yang again paused, but she didn't look up at Ruby. The gears seemed to be turning in her head, dialing between the appropriate responses given their situation, no doubt. Instead, Ruby got a nonverbal reply in another smash, and another piece of wood being added to the pile.

Ruby grimaced and fidgeted her hands together, and despite her bravado earlier, Ruby felt the weariness of the day sinking into her bones as well. She didn't know if she had it left in her to stand up to Yang again, even if she wasn't herself back at Brunswick.

"Yang, what's going on. You're doing it again."

"Doing what, Ruby?" The annoyance was subtle but present in Yang's voice.

"You're overdoing things. You're distracting yourself. You're getting yourself busy so that you don't have to think about things."

Ruby got a bland look from Yang.

"You can talk to me, you know!" she added.

Yang stood up. The tall blonde flinched a little as the vertebrae in her back relaxed and popped, reminding her just how long she had been stooped over that tree building that heap of combustibles.

"Thanks, Ruby," said Yang, a slight and sympathetic smile adorning her tired face. "But you're already dealing with a lot. You don't want my problems."

Finally feeling like it was safe to approach, Ruby swept up to Yang's side. She stared at the massive woodpile, noting how it seemed larger up close and marveling briefly at her productivity before addressing Yang again.

"I wouldn't be a very good team leader if I didn't hear you out," she mewled. "You don't have to wall yourself off from me because you feel bad about saying that you're feeling bad."

Ruby's words seemed to kindle something approaching pride in Yang. As she beheld her baby sister, Yang could allow herself to think at how she never imagined how far she would go. She always had confidence in Ruby's enthusiasm and that she could do whatever she set her mind to, no matter how naive it seemed. _Hero_ wasn't exactly a formal job title, but it was one that Ruby had her heart set on from a time where she could determine her own fate. As she recalled their run-in with the Grimm in the well, an encounter that would not soon leave her nightmares, she felt a twinge of shame at her failed morale back in the estate.

Yang was fully cognizant of everything she had said. She found it difficult to look Ruby in the eyes after becoming aware that she had basically pressured her into giving up, and she sought to smother that shame by being useful to the team. As she always did.

"Is it about you and Blake?"

Yang felt the hairs on her neck rise. It was an inevitability that Ruby would ask, but despite her attempts at rehearsing the conversation in her head, Yang had never come to a properly scripted response.

"Kinda'." Yang shifted her stance, loosening her stiffened hips as she had her shoulders and back before.

"Are you guys still fighting?"

"We aren't fighting."

"You're just not talking?"

Yang sighed. It was something that would have to be addressed sooner or later, but her feelings on the matter were… complicated. That was always the way it went, wasn't it? Her bitterness was long lasting and her trust was slow to rebuild, yet she had been carrying on with her partner in an uneasily bipolar relationship. They were in sync while repelling the Grimm from the train, but ever since the revelations they were all subjected to, it's all been wary glances and smoldering glares. She felt like Blake was treating her like a porcelain doll and it infuriated her; she hadn't gone through a long and lonely recovery only to brazenly venture into a bandit camp, accidentally rescue their runaway teammate, make it back to Ruby and then confront Raven in the Haven Academy vault and be treated like she would sprain a back muscle retrieving her own duffel bag.

Save the small conversation they had in the shed, which quickly soured, they hadn't had any meaningful discourse since right after Yang was detained during the Vytal Festival. Another lifetimes ago memory.

"Yang!"

"Ruby."

"Say something," she said, elongating vowels childishly.

"We're… trying to talk."

Here was something Ruby never imagined—Yang being the socially awkward one. For all of her life, Yang was the outgoing one that shone like the summer sun no matter what company was present. A jokester, pokester, never-leave-you-lonester with an incorrigible grin and tempestuous attitude who always had your back no matter who or what you were facing. It physically hurt her to see how shut-in Yang had become.

"Well, you need to," Ruby said firmly.

Yang raised a brow. "Why?" she said, her lip retaining a curl for just long enough to avoid being obnoxious.

"Because we almost lost her today," she said curtly. Yang recoiled slightly, but it didn't escape Ruby's notice. Similarly, the tears beneath the hood, reflecting the evening glow, didn't escape Yang's gaze. More difficult to believe than the huntress Ruby was shaping up to be was that those same tear shedding eyes were the very same ones indwelt with a legendary superpower. The superpower that saved her partner and, likely, the rest of them as well.

"But—I—… Yeah. I know." Yang put a hand on her forehead and released a shuddering breath. For a moment, Yang's steely exterior came down and Ruby could see the emotional side of her sister—the thoughtful one, not the Yangry one.

"I know you know how this is," Ruby started, her voice even, "and maybe you guys really do need more time. It's only been a couple of weeks!" She knew that it would take more than that to resolve a year's time away from each other. Ruby drew her cloak near, feeling a chill. "But don't wait until it's too late, Yang. Please. I know you. You'll never forgive yourself."

The blonde bowed her head sullenly. "But how?" Yang flashed the hand from her forehead, her lilac gaze swapping to the identically colored sky. "She's trying to be so nice that it's _smothering_."

"Maybe that's her way of saying sorry?" Ruby seemed to have regained some composure; the glint of those tears was gone. "She spent a lot of time away from us. She's more direct now, but Blake's still gonna be kind of a… shut-in."

"Maybe to you guys," she said, crossing her arms defiantly. "But you know what it feels like she's saying to me? 'You can't help yourself.' 'She's disabled, she needs my help!' I'm not a little kid, she knows that!"

"Does she?" intoned Ruby Rose, her voice flat. Yang raised her brows again, caught off guard. "Have you told her that?" Ruby continued.

Yang grimaced and looked elsewhere, wishing that Ruby would disintegrate her with that stare like she did the Apathy. "N-no…"

"There's your freaking problem!" Ruby raised her voice and her arms, blooming her cloak dramatically. "If you're both acting like moody teenagers," which they were, to be fair, "you guys are never going to get back to normal! She's not a mind reader," she said, then pointed at Yang, "and you're too hardheaded to forgive her!"

"But—"

"No!" Ruby screeched, shaking her head free of her hood. "No! I know how badly it must have hurt you. I was there!" Ruby panted as her words exceeded her reserves of breath. "But she's here now, and you need to make good on that." Tapping the toes of her boots against the snow covered ground, Ruby smoothed her skirt out and drew her cloak back up. "You know," Ruby muttered, peering up from beneath her hood, "Blake has been staring at you ever since we left Mistral. She missed you a lot, _I can see it_. She's looking for a chance. And _you_ missed her a lot, too. I _know_. "

Then there was a knowing gleam in Ruby's eyes. Everyone saw the way Yang took Blake's hand and marched the two of them out to the bike-and-wagon ensemble.

Ruby didn't wait for Yang to scrape an argument together. "Trust me. When you guys stop acting weird and just let your feelings _out_ , things will get back to normal."

With that, Ruby whirled and took long, crunchy strides back to the camp, a soft orange glow in an otherwise darkening path-side wood.

"Ruby?" Yang called after her. She stopped and looked back.

"Yang?" Silver eyes widened curiously.

"... Thanks, sis."

The two shared a lingering smile and Ruby continued down her original path, stomping through the snowdrifts like a twelve year old the whole way. For her part, Yang gathered two armloads from the woodpile and walked them over to the fireside. To her nonsurprise, Blake, presently sitting on a log by the firepit, was the first one to hail her approach. Yang wasn't subtle about it, what with her biker boots crushing large quantities of virgin snow underfoot. But after what Ruby told her, she was ready to meet her gaze when her ears gave that telltale flick.

Yang went over and dropped the firewood a safe ways away from the fire so that it would catch no embers, and on her way she nodded to Weiss and Oscar, who were seeing to the evening meal and first watch respectively. She cast a frown at Qrow, who was quite a ways away, propped up against a tree and sipping from his seemingly bottomless flask. No sight of Maria, nor did she care where she went off to. Yang shook her head and walked over to her partner, willing the anxiety in her chest to be still.

"Hey Blake," she greeted awkwardly. How long had it been since she initiated the conversation between the two?

"Do you need something, Yang?" she said uncertainly as her eyes widened.

"No. But… can I sit here?" she asked sheepishly.

Blake blinked, thinking the request odd. But she managed a smile, which was as much as Yang wanted to see after the haunted expression she'd been wearing all day.

"Sure."

As Yang lowered herself onto the sitting log, she couldn't help but notice the firelit smirk and the silvery glint of Ruby's eyes.


End file.
